The Zoolander Diaries: are male models more than just pretty faces?

Since its launch in 2012 the biannual London Collections: Men (our men’s fashion week) has become so significant that Burberry has just bid arrivederci to Milan and will now show here. According to the British Fashion Council, the luxury menswear sector is growing twice as fast as womenswear. Is it time to reappraise what we think we know about male models? To borrow a phrase, I’m pretty sure there’s a lot more to modelling than being really, really, ridiculously good-looking. And I’ve decided to find out what that is.

But first a bit of background. The 1980s, that alpha decade of sex and excess, saw the emergence of the first male supermodels, the likes of clean-cut Americans Jeff Aquilon, Michael Flinn, Hoyt Richards and Bruce Hulse. Hulse did a great deal to cement the public perception of the male model with his book Sex, Love, and Fashion: A Memoir of a Male Model about crotch body-doubles, silk pants (for men), and model bed-hopping. The photographer Bruce Weber and the designer Calvin Klein were the high priests of this era, celebrating the male body in its most sculptural and Apollonian form.

This aesthetic continued through the 1990s, but things began to change in the early 2000s, when androgynous geeks and skinny, gap-toothed freaks began to get a look-in (although more in London than New York). Androgyny was à la mode, as dictated by the powerhouses in Paris. ‘Hedi Slimane was then the creative director of Dior Homme and he is credited with introducing these pencil-thin, street-cast urchins,’ says Eric Down, senior style editor at Men’s Health. ‘Slimane’s version of male beauty was so influential it prompted Chanel’s Karl Lagerfeld to diet his way into Dior Homme’s super-slim designs.’ The TV presenter and fashion writer Rick Edwards was at Select (model agency) with David Gandy at the time: ‘People used to say he was too muscular, too classically good-looking.’

Gandy helped change the shape of male modelling in 2007 when he became the face and abs of Dolce & Gabbana’s Light Blue fragrance. That famous shot of Essex’s finest lounging in a rowing boat in a pair of tight white pants launched his career. ‘We have our favourites like David Gandy, Noah Mills, Adam Senn, Enrique Palacios,’ says Stefano Gabbana. ‘Why? Because they reflect our ideal man, which is different from a real man.’

Today there is no single set aesthetic for male models — it’s a ‘healthier’ mix. At one end of the spectrum the likes of Burberry and Lanvin still tend to use skinny, fresh-faced, groomed guys, whereas Dolce & Gabbana and Versace prefer a more muscular, romantic lead.

Although men’s fashion is undoubtedly on the up, it is still dwarfed by womenswear. According to a 2011 survey by the consultants Bain & Company, the global luxury market is worth £160 billion a year. Menswear saw an increase of 14 per cent against just eight per cent in womenswear that year. However, it still only accounts for 40 per cent of the market and that disproportion is reflected in models’ earnings. ‘The top women still get paid so much more,’ says Gandy. ‘Gisele earned $13 million last year. No guy in the industry is earning that amount — not even a quarter. The disparity is huge.’

‘The pay is massively better for women but men have way more longevity,’ says the Levi’s and H&M model Jerome Rebeiro. ‘Women have to start in their teens and most of them are finished a few years later. Men like myself might only enter modelling in their thirties or even forties and then stay in it on and off for decades.’ A new father and a trained graphic designer, Rebeiro is not a full-time model — by choice. ‘However, modelling makes up about 80 per cent of my income now,’ he says.

Rebeiro has only been modelling for two years but what can an established and successful male model expect to earn in a year? ‘It’s safe to say in the region of £100,000 to £600,000, depending on the model and the jobs he books,’ estimates Daniel Jaems, a former model who is now a fashion photographer and creative director of modelling website ftape.com.

‘People think there’s nothing to modelling, just a bit of faffing around in front of a camera,’ says Rebeiro. ‘And I thought the same before I started. But it is a tremendous amount of work.’

‘Male models need to spend their career living in gyms and maintaining size, good skin, fresh appearance,’ says Jon Bruce, a model booker with PRM agency. ‘It’s very competitive — the industry is constantly on the lookout for the next best thing.’

The models I have spoken to have admitted to a punishing regime of no carbohydrates after lunch and serious dehydration before an underwear shoot in order for their abs to appear more defined. Most train at the gym at least three times a week, and if all else fails ‘suck in the cheeks!’ But ill-advised crash diets and eating disorders are not uncommon.

‘If you are looking for the protein bar, 100 push-ups in between castings, “have I got organic broccoli stuck in my bleached teeth?” kind of model you see in the movie, then head to New York where Zoolander is pretty much a documentary,’ says Jaems. ‘The teeth whitening and hair conditioning is reserved for the Americans. Most of the Europeans are quite laidback in public.’

It doesn’t sound very glamorous. But to really understand the milieu, I realised I had to become a part of it. By some serendipity, Oliver Spencer, one of my favourite menswear designers, asked me to walk at his autumn/winter London Collections show in January. I collared David Gandy beforehand for a lesson on how to walk the male catwalk.

In the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral on the runway of the Hackett show we stage a private ‘walk-off’ à la Zoolander. He goes first: a confident stride, shoulders back, head up. Then it’s my turn. He gives me some tips: walk purposefully but naturally, as if striding down the street; look straight ahead so as not to be put off by familiar faces on the front row; most importantly try not to overthink it. ‘Give me your best “Blue Steel”,’ he says, as I strut past the tombs of Sir Christopher Wren, Admiral Nelson and the Duke of Wellington. ‘Not bad,’ he concludes. ‘But can you turn left?’

Backstage at the British Fashion Council show space on New Oxford Street, Spencer looks relaxed as his production team of 70 — seamstresses, dressers, hair and make-up stylists — scurries around him. This ten-minute show is costing Spencer £50,000. There are 18 models, who have each been paid £250 to £400, depending on experience. Behind the partition, 600 people who have flown in from all over the world for London Collections: Men are beginning to take their seats.

In most shows I would stick out as an imposter. I am 34 and 5ft 11½in (yes, the half inch matters). I am, according to Jaems, ‘older, broader, shorter and fuller than most models’. Fortunately, Spencer likes to assemble a deliberately eclectic cast. ‘My show represents the kind of men I make clothes for,’ he says. ‘What I’m aiming for is a cross-section of London: different ages, different sizes, different ethnicities, but all real characters. There’s no point in me sending stereotypical models down the runway. They are not my customers.’

Sure, there are the returning faces of the brand such as Greg Payne — who looks uncannily like Johnny Depp (Google him). But to my great relief, not everyone here is a professional, and very few of them model full-time. One is a charming, chatty kook called Mark who happens to be Spencer’s postman. Another is Ramiro, an art dealer and stay-at-home dad in his late forties who arrived at the venue looking like the Brazilian Jay Gatsby. And then there is Rick Edwards, now a fashion columnist for The Observer. Rick and I are close friends and for several years we shared a house. He’d supplemented his student loans with modelling work, but gave it up as soon as he got a job in TV because most of the other models were ‘exactly as you would expect: dull, vain, into smoking weed and talking shit’.

I wonder if the weed smoking is to deal with nerves, because I am terrified as I wait in the wings. ‘Don’t overthink it, don’t overthink it, don’t overthink it,’ loops the mantra in my head. I am overthinking it. All I have to do is walk around a room once, get changed into a second outfit bloody quickly and then make another circuit. What’s so hard about that? And yet I can feel my limbs stiffening. A make-up artist dabs forlornly at my sweaty forehead with mattifying powder.

In the event, it was a bit like being on a roller coaster. Except without the screaming. The worst bit was waiting my turn in the train of models. But once I got my signal to go from the producer, I rather enjoyed the ride and it was all over too quickly. However, I fear that I might have a Pavlovian response in future whenever I hear the show’s soundtrack — ‘I Ran (So Far Away)’ by A Flock of Seagulls — and start manically strutting.

Purely by coincidence — was it something I had done with my hair? — the day after I walked in Spencer’s show, Reiss asked me if I would do a shoot for its website wearing the latest collection. Reiss liked the resultant shots so much they are currently plastered all over the shop windows, both here and internationally. Jon Bruce is thinking about representing me. Maybe Derek and Hansel will give me a part as an extra in Zoolander 2. I’m working on my ‘Magnum’ just in case.

Dan Rookwood is style director of Men’s Health